Blood
There is an awful lot of blood in religious scripture. Contrary to the benevolent message, blood is spilled regularly, often even by the apparent heroes. Furthermore, there are lots of religious laws about blood, even those forbidding people to eat blood! This has inspired lots of silly horror stories and conspiracy theories about Satanism. But as usual, the truth behind it is just a lame spook pun: Semitic דם dm dam for “blood” puns with דמה dmh dama for “imitation” & “disguise”. The laws about not “eating blood” are really prohibitions to reveal a disguise.
Since the words are so similar, many people assume they’re related somehow. Since the word root √dm also includes the meanings “red”, “earth” & “man”, my best guess is that √dm originally described the otherwise hard-to-define color of men & earth: a reddish-brown. Since “read earth”, or clay, was used in early pottery, “clay-ing” or “adam-ing” real-life forms would in archaic times have meant to “imitate” them, with clay. For more puns, see Adam.
- In this sense, Hebrew לא אכל דם lˀ ˀkl dm la akal dam means: “Do not consume blood!”
- And Hebrew לא גלה דמה lˀ glh dmh la galah dama means: “Do not reveal a disguise!”
Hebrew dm, dmy, dmˀ = blood
Hebrew, Aramaic dmh, dmy, dmˀ = similar, likeness, imitate, disguise
דמה dmh dama : to resemble; to seem, to appear — Hebrew (Wikt)
דמה dmh dama : to be like, resemble, to be equal in value; he was like, resembled; he was like, resembled; he likened, compared; he intended; he thought, believed, imagined; he was likened;; he seemed, appeared; ,; he likened himself to… — Hebrew (Klein)
דמיון dmywn dimyon : likeness, resemblance; example; imagination — Hebrew (Klein)
דמי dmy demei : to imagine, suspect, consider; resembling, like; it is right; to imagine, speculate; to be like, to take an example; to appear — Hebrew (Jastrow)
דמי dmy : to be like; to compare x to y; to aim at; likened to; to make something like; to emulate; to do the same; to draw a conclusion, imagine, envision; to look at; to be similar; to be assimilated to; to imitate, be in the guise of; to imagine oneself to be something; to be made like — Aramaic (CAL)
דמא dmˀ dmā : to liken, to compare, to resemble — Aramaic (Wikt)
דומי dwmy dmē : similarity; verisimilitude; similar thing; similar to, just like; to take on the appearance of; image, figure — Aramaic (CAL)
מדמין mdmyn mḏamyān : imitator — Aramaic (CAL)